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I got this one from Patrick, who got it from Bruce Sterling. Poppy Z. Brite has been kicked out of an online forum that not only discusses her works, but is named after her. Why? As far as I can tell, because she’s sane and they aren’t.
The odd little thing that caught my eye is that the community's userinfo defines "childfree" as "That means you don't ever want to reproduce. Ever. Not now. Not today. Not tomorrow. If you want to adopt at some time in the future, that's peachy."
(Which, poking around, doesn't appear to be the generally accepted definition of the term, and certainly makes no particular sense.)
The adoption bit, I mean, as I see I wasn't clear.
It would be interesting to know how many people there are in that venue, given that it has such cranky and specific specs.
Well, one doesn't have to join the community in order to read it, but there are only 18 members.
It would be interesting to know how many people there are in that venue, given that it has such cranky and specific specs.
The LiveJournal community pbz_bangers has 18 members; 14 of them display the community's posts on their aggregated reading ("friends") page. Four more people display the community on their aggregated reading page but are not members. There is no way to know how many other people might read the community's posts other than on their "friends" page.
This quote was particularly interesting regarding their "childfree" aspect:
When I was... eight or so I believe, my much-older cousin became pregnant for the first time. Up until then, she and I had gotten along pretty well, but her unripe crotch-fruit began to kick her one day while she was over at our house. Which was fine- none of my business, right? Wrong. She demanded my sister and I come over and "feel the baby kick". I shook my head and hid in the kitchen. My mother dragged me out. I shuddered visibly when my hand met her stomach.
My cousin has hated me ever since :). And I'm twenty now!--kwobtchan
"Unripe crotch-fruit" has a certain ring to it I guess.
And what is the origin of this term "sprog?"
There's something really beautiful and po-mo about that whole incident.
I just wish I knew where those "other communities for insulting one's fans" are. Not that I have many fans yet, but, y'know, I want to get a head start.
Seems similar to that old story (anyone remember it better?) about the poet who wandered into a critics' debate on his poetry. At some point, he explained what he had in mind when he wrote it. "How should you know what the poem means," scoffed a critic. "After all, you're only the author."
Or that SF story (my Dad keeps bugging me to dig out the author and title) about Shakespeare resurrected, or snatched to the present via time machine. When asked point blank if he wrote the plays, or Bacon, he says: "Well, there are three main theories on that..."
I've had critics disagree with me about what I meant in specific poems and short stories. I've had (as posted on another thread) the U.S. Government tell me that they think my scientific work is "bullshit." I've had old friends refer to me contemptuously as a "breeder." But I've never been quite as kafka'd as Poppy Z. Brite, whose work, of course, I greatly admire.
You know, I skimmed through this "kwobtchan"'s journal, and I'm sorry, the only thing that keeps going through my mind is "What a self-absorbed little bitch!"
Don't you think she was being perhaps just the teensiest bit rude? Consider the size of the community in which she made her comments. It would have felt like a bucket of cold water. I found her remarks somewhat ironic, considering the early differences from 'normal' authors that fueled her career. Individual tastes, I reckon. I might add that the mod may not have realized she was indeed herself. Nobody believed Misty was actually going to show up in my back yard until she did...
PS There's that whole church based on SIASL, you know? Some of their scions told me they didn't get along with Heinlein at all.
Well, just going by what Poppy Z. Brite wrote about what happened, I'd say she was rude and deserved to be banned.
I might agree that the community itself is a bunch of weirdos - I don't know, I haven't gone there. But if I post a comment on a community that disparages the central tenet of the community, I would expect two things.
One, if it's a discussion community that enjoys getting new people involved, some response: polite, impolite, flame-y.
Two, if it's a community of friends who got together to rabbit on with like-minded people and who really aren't interested in complete strangers showing up to tell them they're nuts, I'd expect to be banned from the community.
That community was apparently named for Poppy Z. Brite does not justify her rudeness nor her arrogance. If I name my house Darkover, that doesn't mean I'm giving permission for Marion Zimmer Bradley to show up and criticise my furniture. (It would be especially spooky if she did, since she's been dead for years, of course.)
There is also the point that if you have a minority taste that other people do not share but feel free to criticise, you may well be all to used to total strangers showing up and thinking they have a perfect right to tell you you're weird. The first time it happens it may be amusing, and you may feel like playing with the stranger. After it happens a certain number of times, frankly you just feel like biting their head off. Poppy Z. Brite may simply have overloaded their quotient of "tolerance for people showing up out of nowhere to criticise".
Er. I can't agree that PZB was being rude.
She asked a reasonable question. "Why are you for this? I do this related thing, but I just don't get this. I really would like to know." Everyone who is getting criticism out of this is obviously reading something very different than I am. I wasn't aware it was rude to ask someone why they believe something.
She responds to someone who has dissed something she wrote with "actually, that's not true at all, this is true". Which frankly, as the author of the stuff, I think she had a right to do. That may have been snarky, but it was justified snarky.
She got warned for being "off-topic", when nothing in the LJ userinfo suggests that what she talked about was off-topic, to wit: The child-free bit is in the user info, so it hardly seems off-topic, and the other was a response to an earlier post, which makes it almost positive it's on-topic.
She asked what she wrote that was off-topic and was banned.
Verdict: PZB may have been slightly snarky, but certainly didn't deserve instant, no-discussion knee-jerk banning by self-absorbed anime chick.
Of course, YMM(AOD)V.
People reading this also might be interested in the related LJ Drama thread, however.
Oh, also:
"Two, if it's a community of friends who got together to rabbit on with like-minded people and who really aren't interested in complete strangers showing up to tell them they're nuts, I'd expect to be banned from the community."
Actually, I'd expect a closed, friends-locked community. Otherwise, guess what? You're open to the public, you're open to public comment. Why people don't get this, I don't know.
30 years ago, it was desperately important to me to identify myself as "childfree" and know I was not alone because normal society was telling me I either didn't exist or was evil. It was like being gay, though of course nowhere near as scary.
Actually, I'd expect a closed, friends-locked community. Otherwise, guess what? You're open to the public, you're open to public comment. Why people don't get this, I don't know.
*shrugs* It amazes me how many people don't sit down and read the instructions to find out if they can do something that they want to do. But I'm a (former) technical writer: reading instructions comes naturally to me. I have lots of friends on livejournal and elsewhere who don't think of reading the instructions: and in any case, IMO you have to have a bad experience before it occurs to you to start out with a community that's closed and friends-locked.
Going back and re-reading it, what PZB says she said was "Not that there's anything wrong with parading one's differences, but I don't care for communities where it is a requirement."
My response would have been: "Well, honey, if you don't care for this community, why did you join it? Buzz off." And then, yes, I'd have banned her. There are, presumably, plenty of other communities she could join to tell people discussing her writing that they'd interpreted her wrong.
Of course, I'm reacting like this because Poppy Z. Brite sounds very like your average anti-slash fan who joins a slash fan community in order to tell the slash fans that she doesn't care for slash and she doesn't like communities that discuss it. Well, you know, if you don't like slash, if you don't care for communities that discuss slash, don't join them.
Being ChildFree means never having to say "The dingo et my baby."
Yes, that does about tear it. You and I are reading different things, Yonmei.
I get nothing of what you did from what she posted.
*shrug* Not worth arguing about. I stand by my original interpretation and opinion, you stand by yours, we're good here.
if you think the characters in THE VALUE OF X are normal, I can't help thinking you have a great deal to learn about normalcy.
That isn't rude? It's patronizing, at best.
I think that given that she was responding to someone characterizing her work as “insipid boy-love novels in which all the characters are annoyingly normal,” she was fairly restrained.
Yeah, David, because readers have no right to comment disparagingly on a writer's novels where the writer might read their opinions and get offended. If they do, they ought to expect the writer to jump in on them and explain that they're interpreting her wrong.
Tina - fair enough.
JeremyT, "sprog" is a colloquial term for a child or baby. It's fairly common in the UK. It's used here in Oz but a lot wouldn't have heard it.
http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_/sprog.html
I'm not sure about its etymology but the words "spawn" and "sperm" spring to mind. I know it was slang for semen when I was a little sprog.
Y’know, Yonmei, I’d say that you’re interpreting me wrong, but that would be just a little too metatextual.
It’s a free planet. Of course a reader has the right to slag an author’s books, even in public. But that reader shouldn’t be surprised if the author takes offense. And where taking offense is concerned, Ms. Brite could have gone much further.
David, actually, what I'd expect from a writer aged over (say) 15 would be for the writer to suck in a deep breath and get over it.
Well, that’s part of it, too. I don’t actually read Ms. Brite’s comment as a defense of her work. It looks to me like she’s already taken that deep breath and she’s got a valid point to make that has nothing in particular to do with her work — though of course without more context it’s hard to be sure.
On a side note, I hope that when you say “expect” what you mean is “hope”, because otherwise I think you’re in for a lot of disappointment.
Many people say 'I think x is wrong!' when what they really mean is 'I don't understand x.' This has the corollary that some of us who are quite used to saying 'I don't understand x' say it, we are assumed to be saying 'I think x is wrong!'
You can talk about your Golden Rule, categorical imperative, etc., but making fun of slash fiction is right there with them as far as moral obligations go.
And what in the hell is a Poppy Z. Brite?
Hello, member of the forum here! The funny thing is, the forum isn't actually about Poppy Z. Brite at all. If you read the description, you'll see that it's a joke, based on the fact that her books are somewhat heavier than yaoi manga.
I think Poppy noted that she had no wish to join the community, but she had long been curious as to why so many people identify so vehemently with the "childfree" as a primary adjective. The only really snarky bit, I felt, was in that last sentence, where perhaps she attributed one member's remarks to the group as a whole.
I'm no Poppy fan actually, although I did read both Lost Souls and Drawing Blood. (Liked Drawing Blood more, for obvious reasons, but then I'm an artist and a comics geek.) I have no reason to think of Poppy with approbation or otherwise, but I don't think she acted overly inappropriately. I'm a big fan of warning people what the rules are BEFORE slapping them down, if slapping down is required.
Unfortunately, Kat, from the description posted it looks like the description/info has been changed since the fracas under discussion (which I'm having some trouble finding on the 'journal just now...).
That said, Poppy makes two comments that I can see as being a bit insulting. 1)"I can't help thinking you have a great deal to learn about normalcy." 2)"I don't care for communities where it is a requirement." I don't think either one was worth more than a shrug of the shoulders; banning Poppy is, in my opinion, an extreme and somewhat immature reaction. But then, this is the internet we're talking about.
Yonmei, you appear to be arguing that criticism is a one way street. Fans can criticize authors; authors can't criticize fans. God forbid that a fan "suck in a deep breath and get over it" if an author disagrees with them. Certainly kwobtchan has the power to do what she likes in a community that she mods/owns, but that power doesn't mean her decisions are mature. (If it did, one would have to say that all Bush's decisions were good just because he has the power of the presidency.)
I agree with Jason that a couple sentences in Poppy's post are vaguely snarky, but all in all, it seems to me like a rather diplomatically worded piece of writing that exhibits a genuine desire to understand the community member's point-of-view.
What none of you are getting is that the journal was never about Poppy she just thought it was. They were making fun of her books really but using them to beat people down.
Yeah, the reasoning behind the community name has certainly changed/been edited, Jason! It had to really, after that piece of drama! :)
Hey, Joy, I agree with you, but I think bringing in GWB is skirting awfully close to Godwin’s Law . . .
Anon — We get it, but it’s funnier the other way.
David--Had never heard that phrase before and had to look it up . . . but a fair comment. :) I'll let more articulate souls carry the argument.
Well, I can certainly see how Brite's comments might be read as negative. I don't think they are actually, but her tone could have been better. And on the flip side I have to say that my experiences with people who identify as childfree have *not* been positive. I tried hanging out in a usenet group for the same for awhile when I was going through one of my bitter, Oh, I don't have children, I'm not a real person, we aren't a real family, children are the only..., etc. periods some years ago. It was an ugly experience. I've never seen a usenet group fueled by that much bitterness, sarcasm, and vitriol. They all seemed as quick to fly off the handle when questioned as this group. I'm getting a vision of huge chips on very sensitive shoulders. I'd say the whole thing is a tempest in a teapot.
MKK
Yonmei:
I think Poppy's comments were *somewhat* rude. Not as rude as you think, and well within my bounds of tolerance.
IMVHO, however, banning a person from a community after one post is excessive**. Giving warning, yes -- but allowing them a chance to retract, or defend, or reason first.
Anything else is, well, considerably *ruder* than posting a message that is possibly more condescending than intended, or open to kest's 'I don't understand x' vs 'I think x is wrong!' misinterpretation.
** Yes there are exceptions, but they involve hate mail, death threats, or otherwise legally actionable remarks.
Reading the John C. Wright critical episode that David mentioned, I thought Wright's umbrage was lovely and tragic:
"Miss, the book takes place hundreds of thousands of years in the future. These issues will not be fashionable then. I am writing for the ages, not for the present generation only."
Although, considering the "issues" he refers to are basic conservation and environmentalism, I don't see how they could go out of fashion as long as we breathe...
(original reference here http://fantasticadaily.com/misc.php?fID=36 )
I see Wright's point, but it would have made more sense for him to argue that the technological capabilities of his imaginary civilizations, rather than the great span of years, renders our contemporary views of the issues moot (which he later does, both directly and by inference).
I found Wright's arguments against Cheryl's review to be rather telling -- and not in his favour. Maybe I just ate one "of course" too many, but -- without having read the book -- I got the impression that he unintentionally confirmed most of Cheryl's political critiques without actually realising why she was making them.
Which has set my head to spinning somewhat because (sorry, Cheryl) I don't think it was a very good review, as reviews go, being more of the nature of a diatribe triggered by an allergic reaction to the author's perceived politics. And while my political sympathies are closer to Cheryl's, my literary sensibilities are shrieking "no! no! this is wrong!" about both the review and the response to it.
Aaargh ...
Lenora, actually, I agree: PZB's comments were more foolish than rude and banning anyone for a first offense is excessive.
On a side note, I hope that when you say 93expect94 what you mean is 93hope94, because otherwise I think you92re in for a lot of disappointment.
*grin* "Expect" in the sense of having high expectations of adults. But really, given how some adults behave, it's more like hope.
Joy: you appear to be arguing that criticism is a one way street. Fans can criticize authors; authors can't criticize fans.
Well, yes, I am. To be specific: a fan can criticise what an author writes. That is a function of being free to read and to interpret freely what you read. Some of what comes out of the fan's head may be complete garbage. Some may be brilliant. Most will probably fall somewhere in between.
A writer criticising what a fan writes about what the writer has written is taking a step in the wrong direction. Yes, it is very hard to step back and say nothing when a reader is spouting complete garbage. But, IMO, it's much safer to take the position that you say nothing at any time (unless specifically invited) than to assume that you-the-writer have a right to criticise how your readers read what you wrote. (Does that make sense? I hope so.)
I may start a discussion group about the writings of an author I like to read. That does not necessarily mean I would welcome the writer herself (or himself) to join the group uninvited, or to mix into the discussions by correcting the readerly interpretations of what s/he wrote to what the writer sees as the one true POV. Now that's not exactly what PZB did - but yes, honestly, I think a writer encountering a bunch of fans should think several times "Am I really entitled to do this?" before assuming that s/he will automatically be welcomed into the group just because they're discussing what s/he wrote.
In fairness, there's two exceptions to this: If a fan is claiming textual authority for an interpretation that simply isn't there, and if a fan is claiming that s/he knows "What the writer was thinking when s/he wrote this was..."
Entitlement? If you run an online forum, blog, list, etc. that allows posting without registration, pre-approval, or other special procedures, anyone who comes along is by default entitled to leave their two cents. Whether they're being rude (or stupid) by doing so is a completely different argument, and the owner/moderator of the forum is quite entitled in turn to, say, disemvowel an egregiously useless and offensive post. Or throw a hissy fit like the PBZ list moderator did. Or delete it. Or replace it with links to Tolkien slash and pictures of kittens (now that makes one grateful for disemvoweling, eh?).
Is it generally wise for an author to hit out in such a fashion? Probably not. But they have just as much "right" to interject on an open board/list as they would if they were interrupting a nearby conversation in the real world. Nobody ever said it was nice or advisable, is all.
I think there might be an age issue here too - the vast majority of LJ users are in their teens and early twenties, and the impression I've gotten from those affinity communities I've dipped into is that the members desperately want a place where they're Us, and everyone else is Them. I imagine having one of their touchstones drop in to their Safe Place and not be what they've made of her would be a huge shock.
The "childfree" movement has always sort of reminded me of militant anti-deism - there's the same sense that the non-believers are being oppressed by the mere existence of belief, and specific examples of bad behavior on the part of believers seem like fuel to an existing fire.
I feel a little badly for kwobtchan, though. This all reminds me a little of the scene in Annie Hall where the obnoxious pseud on the movie theater line is blathering about McLuhan and McLuhan comes on to call him an idiot. It's a satisfying moment to watch, but definitely ungentle.
I feel a little badly for kwobtchan, though.
I don't. Kwobtchan, based on her other posts, is just the Internet version of a playground bully, not the big guy who beats kids up, but the alpha girl who says, "We started a club and you can't be in it, nya nya na nya nya." If she wasn't this sort of person, she wouldn't be trumpeting the fact that she Xed Brite from her list. PZB was, in my reading, perfectly polite. While I'm not a huge fan of hers, I did rather enjoy her Jeffrey Dahmer/Dennis Nilsen team-up novel, whose name escapes me at the moment. If she's feeling low, she can take comfort in the fact that she's already gone loads of places that kwobtchan--who is probably beating off over PZB's photo even as we speak--will never, ever go.
julia, interesting remark about the connection between self-IDing childfree folk and anti-deist folk, both feeling oppressed by the existence of belief.
I wouldn't be surprised if they a lot of pressure growing up to be enchilded/ religious, respectively, and are simply going through the pushback phase. I know I certainly went through that, in my twenties.
-l.
I don't. Kwobtchan, based on her other posts, is just the Internet version of a playground bully, not the big guy who beats kids up, but the alpha girl who says, "We started a club and you can't be in it, nya nya na nya nya."
One of the reasons online community has been kind of dispiriting to me is that I've seen a lot of people who grew up isolated become scarifying bullies when the get the chance, as if the shark dance of their childhoods was what they were outside of when they missed the sense of community. I had lots of illusions about community myself (most of them woefully uninformed) and when I see people swimming around like the alpha fish, I always think they look as if they've been through the intestines of a shark and it makes me kind of sad.
Obviously I'm projecting madly, and it doesn't do anyone who gets bullied now any good, but I still have a tendresse for my utopian youthful illusions.
I don't see how Ms. Brite could have known what she was stepping into, though.
I wouldn't be surprised if they a lot of pressure growing up to be enchilded/ religious, respectively, and are simply going through the pushback phase. I know I certainly went through that, in my twenties.
You know, I wonder about that too - it seems like such a shame, though, because as long as you're focussed on one side or another of the question, you haven't really escaped. I'm (against all odds or expectations) childed, and it seems to me such a luxury, if you don't choose to be a parent, to be able to put your time and energy into other things.
I never would have heard of PZB at all if not for this post, which means I never would have heard of him or her if this incident hadn't happened.
I won't judge PZB's books without looking at them, but from the brief references thrown here, they really sound like Not My Thing; I probably won't read them. I'm as fond of boy-love novels as the next dirty old f****t you know (though not insipid ones), but it doesn't sound like that's an accurate description. (I'm assuming here that 'boy-love novels' means novels about teenage boys falling in love with each other, and not NAMBLA porn, which I find deeply offensive.)
As far as the owner of the forum, who has done something very silly and immature and then bragged about it, I think my response can be summed up by "point and laugh."
Correct me if I'm wrong but I think there's a Piece of California speak. 'I'm religious about that' or 'That's part of my religion'. A verbal fending off A signalling tha\t one aint entirely rational about a subject.
Like 'poitically correct' it can take a multitude of subtle distingtions.On one side of the spectrum it can be a friendly 'Hey we're just shooting the breeze here don't get heavy' on the other side it can be a blunt fist in the face 'If you don't take my sacred cows with the reverace due to the virtue of your mother. I have the right to verbally chastise you AND/OR if I've got my friends with me get physical'
Poppy poor thing thought she was living in a country with free speech
Gosh, yourallasshats, what a self-parody you are. Pathetic, spelling-challenged, begin with "you people" (spelt wrong). The stereotype of a person who will be deleted and banned.
(Disclaimer: only Teresa herself can make the final judgement about banning someone or deleting hir post.)
Jonathan vos Post wrote:
Seems similar to that old story (anyone remember it better?) about the poet who wandered into a critics' debate on his poetry. At some point, he explained what he had in mind when he wrote it. "How should you know what the poem means," scoffed a critic. "After all, you're only the author."For what it's worth, I agree with the critic. The author knows what he or she was trying to do; but what the rest of the world makes of it, and the uses to which they put it, are something else again. Meaning is a transaction, not a pronouncement. That's one of several reasons I'm often sympathetic to fanfic writers facing attacks by angry authors.
That said, it doesn't look to me like PZB was particularly badly behaved, or trying to assert any kind of over-the-top auctorial privilege. Mostly, it seems she was asking questions, and getting nutty overreactions as a result.
Yonmei writes:
There is also the point that if you have a minority taste that other people do not share but feel free to criticise, you may well be all to used to total strangers showing up and thinking they have a perfect right to tell you you're weird. The first time it happens it may be amusing, and you may feel like playing with the stranger. After it happens a certain number of times, frankly you just feel like biting their head off. Poppy Z. Brite may simply have overloaded their quotient of "tolerance for people showing up out of nowhere to criticise".Not for the first time, I'm moved to observe that we are not responsible for what we do in other people's dreams. That's one of several reasons I'm often sympathetic to authors facing attacks by crazy fans.
GOD BANNED FROM ATHEISM BLOG
04/01/04, Paradena, CA: In an action which immediately gained international attention and was denouced by the Vatican, Iran's Supreme Ayatollah, and a coalition of Hindu leaders, the "God, No!" blog banned God from any further postings on their internet site.
According to webmaster Frank F. Freethinker, "some jerk who claimed to be the Creator started spamming our legitimate site with obnoxious and rude questions."
The blog, which gets over 100,000 pageviews per week, was previously engaged in internal debate about attempts to provide a consensus definition of atheism.
Then a new and unregistered reader asked for a clarification of the differentiation between "weak" and "strong" atheism.
His first posting read: "Paul Henri Holbach, in 1772, wrote what was probably the first openly atheistic book ever published, The System of Nature. In another book, Good Sense, he stated that 'All children are atheists, they have no idea of God.' This statement only makes sense if the term 'atheism' includes a passive sense which does not mean the explicit denial of the existence of any gods. Rights?"
Several dozen bloggers immediately attacked this posting, and its author, on the atheism blog.
The mysterious visitor answered the questions asked of him, brushed aside ad hominem attacks, and asked his second question, citing Charles Bradlaugh, who was one of England's leading atheists and freethinkers in the 19th century. Bradlaugh wrote in 1876 in his book The Freethinker's Text Book:
"Atheism is without God. It does not assert no God. The atheist does not say that there is no God, but he says 'I know not what you mean by God. I am without the idea of God. The word God to me is a sound conveying no clear or distinct affirmation. I do not deny God, because I cannot deny that of which I have no conception, and the conception of which by its affirmer is so imperfect that he is unable to define it for me."
This time, more than a hundred bloggers furiously responded that they did, indeed, deny God, and who was this grotesque lunatic to deny them the right to deny god (which most spelled in lower-case).
The newcomer asked a third question. He quoted from Annie Besant. Before she became a Theosophist, Besant was one of England's most well known atheists and advocates of freethought. In her 1877 book The Gospel of Atheism, she stated:
"The position of the atheist is a clear and reasonable one. I know nothing about God and therefore I do not believe in Him or it. What you tell me about your God is self-contradictory and is therefore incredible. I do not deny 'God,' which is an unknown tongue to me. I do deny your God, who is an impossibility. I am without God." He concluded with a citation to Chapman Cohen, President of Britain's National Secular Society and author of numerous works about atheism and freethought, who wrote in Deity and Design that:
"Atheism, the absence of belief in gods, is a comparatively late phenomenon in history."
At that point, the webmaster banned God from any further postings. This, said Freethinker, should have ended the matter.
"But no matter what filtering software we used, the idiot kep posting. He quoted from Job, he quoted from G.W. Foote, Edward Royle, Carlile, Southwell, Cooper, and Holyoake. He kept making the outrageous and insulting accusal that, logically, our kind of atheism did not prove that there was no God."
A few bloggers shifted slightly to a compromise position that placed the onus probandi on those who affirmed the existence of God. Some said that they regarded themselves as atheists only in his inability to believe what the churches would have them believe. They were content to show that the Christian concept of the supernatural was meaningless, that the arguments in its favor were illogical, and that the mysteries of the universe, insofar as they were explicable, could be accounted for in material terms. Freenthinker expelled those compromisers.
"And then he started spamming our home email addresses, who knows how he got them? Finally, all the water in our homes turned to wine, our ISP cafeteria was overflowing with noninvoiced loaves and fishes," and that was just the beginning.
The Dalai Lama gave a widely televised press conference. He said that anyone, even god, should be free to deny the existence of god, if that brought them inner peace. But he emphasized that the internet was part of Buddha nature, and should allow for all voices, and all styles of music.
Freethinker's wife and family died in a tragic accident. His business went bankrupt overnight. He was last seen wandering downtown Paradena in sackcloth and ashes. "Why me?" he asked pedestrians?
All screens of all computers on Colorado Boulevard immediately scrolled a new posting from God.
But before Freethinker could read it, a trumpet sounded at glass-cracking intensity, and angels with swords of fire descended.
After that... well, we all know.
This press bureau is now being moved to Jerusalem, where The Temple has been rebuilt. We apologize for any interruption.
Yonmei, I think you're wrong here. It wasn't a closed group. It was, for pete's sake, named after Poppy Z. Brite. And it was discussing her work.
Of course writers have the right to criticize fans, just as fans have the right to criticize writers. I don't mean there's parity between the two classes; I mean there's no distinction between them, social or otherwise.
I've always despised the idea that pros and fans are separate classes, with separate roles, responsibilities, and privileges. In the SF community, the default assumption is that they're not inherently separate classes; but the idea that they are is a recurrent error. I can't tell you how much damage I've seen it do.
At one end of the spectrum, it's the basis of the idea that when you're putting together a convention program, anyone who's ever made a professional fiction sale is a more valuable participant than anyone who hasn't, even if the former is a lightweight loudmouth who got lucky with a novelty Christmas short-short, and the latter's been a respected critic for the last twenty years. In the center of the spectrum, that error is a major factor in the failure to understand that conventions aren't a paid ticketed entertainment event, but rather are the community cooperatively getting together to talk to itself. At the other end of the spectrum, it somehow begets the idea that it's all right to be grossly rude to pros and BNFs, and to publicly attack them, and to draft them to act as characters in your own little psychodramas, because they're so distant and mighty that it somehow doesn't count the way it would with real people.
I didn't ask you for your credentials when you first showed up, I don't have different sets of rules here for pros and non-pros. We're all human beings. We come together, in person and online, as members of the same great multipart ongoing conversation.
I'm trying to view with dispassion this idea of yours that a writer coming into a publicly accessible forum (whether or not it's discussing their work) (whether or not the forum itself is named after them) should say nothing at any time unless specifically invited to do so; and furthermore, is so obviously in the wrong if they assume they have the same right to speak to the matter under discussion that anyone else coming in would have, that it's not only justifiable but practically laudable to treat them as rudely as Kwobtchan treated Poppy Brite.
I have trouble viewing that with dispassion.
Here's the blunt version. Are you not aware that you yourself are frequently ruder than Poppy Brite was in that group? And has it not occurred to you that by the rules you've been laying down in this discussion, I should have thrown you out of here within a week or two of your arrival?
You may or may not regard "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us" as the law, but it's still a good idea.
I certainly hope, for authordom's sake, that you're sympathetic to them when attacked by off-balance fans -- when the keeper fails to sympathize with his charges, things go badly.
I read P Brite's single post as two unrelated ones. The first post wonders about "childfree", while the second is responding to a comment about the book "THE VALUE OF X". I think, based upon her comments, that this is also how Brite intended her post to be read: as containing two distinct points.
Unfortunately, reading the two together, it is all too easy to take the commentary on the book as also referring to the childfree community concept. In particular, the last sentence, "Not that there's anything wrong with parading one's differences, but I don't care for communities where it is a requirement", read in that light happens to come across as quite rude.
While I did not "read" the post as rude, I have some sympathy for the members of the community. The mysterious kwobtchan, no matter how we might feel about her response, is interpreting the offered text. The reason the text comes across as rude is because the word "communities" in that last sentence, appears to refer back to the question about community self-definition in the previous paragraph.
Hasty and incautious writing combined with hasty and chip-on-the-shoulder reading reminds me of nothing so much as 90% of internet interaction. Apologies are probably due all around and a new start between the players called for.
BSD, I'm not their keeper, they're not my charges. I sympathize with both sides. Actually, I don't think there are sides. I think there are people.
I'm a fan and a pro. I've seen good behavior and bad from fans and from pros. Some of the bad behavior's been aimed at me. Speaking as a test case, I can tell you that relative publication status didn't make a bit of difference.
The core SF community, what I have in mind when I refer to "fandom", is relatively well behaved. If you compare overall groups -- say, fandom to SFWA -- it certainly doesn't suffer in the comparison.
Some authors get a bad impression of fans because, when they go to a convention, the more polite and thoughtful fans are reticent around them. They don't want to impose. Unfortunately, this can mean they wind up meeting only those fans who don't think about such things. The line Patrick and I always use when we're explaining this phenomenon is, "In fandom, we have a special term for those people. We call them 'jerks'."
I've seen occasions when authors were mightily rude to fans. But since those same authors were just as prone to be rude to other authors, the only conclusion I could draw was that they were rude.
I frequently post to the Neil Gaiman community, and there are sections there devoted to "off topic" non-Neil related posts. The moderator, who I would say is really reasonable & MODERATE moves topics around, and presumably has the power to ban someone (although I've never seen it happen.) But as far as we know, Neil himself doesn't frequent the board. If he were to come on and start calling us all snarky, we'd probably be a bit upset. BUT banning him after one post which was not really "off topic" would be really strange I think.
But then, if it's your forum, don't you have a right to control what exists on/in it? I don't mean Neil-- I don't think it's actually HIS forum-- he didn't start it, they just named it after him. It "belongs" to those who post and created it.
Note: The now-disemvowelled "You people" (actually "You peoeple") message posted at 9:54 this morning came from the same source as last night's message from "anon3.5@dontemailme.com". That's the one that said:
What none of you are getting is that the journal was never about Poppy she just thought it was. They were making fun of her books really but using them to beat people down.I found that oddly unpleasant at the time, and still do.
If anyone's bored and wants to play with it, the IP address is 24.1.175.159.
Julia 97
t seems like such a shame, though, because as long as you're focussed on one side or another of the question, you haven't really escaped.
*sigh* Where were you and this gleaming bit of truth ten years ago? You could've saved me a bundle in therapy fees.
I agree with nina, julia. Nice observation.
-l.
Good reading, Martial. I agree that PZB's post consists of two separate comments, and that if your hypothetical reconstruction of Kwobtchan's reading is correct, she misread it.
(Pause here for something I should have said earlier in this discussion. I could point out Poppy Z. Brite if we were both at a Nebula banquet, and I believe I've been introduced to her at some point, but we're not acquainted, and whatever gods speak through her writing aren't gods that speak to me. When it comes to what she says and what she means by it, I claim no special knowledge. End of disclaimer.)
It may have been hasty and incautious (as you put it) to mention both bonding and community when no specific linkage was intended, but I'm not surprised that it happened. Poppy Brite is an author, a fiction writer. She'd stumbled on a group for whom her works apparently had some shared significance or meaning. All authors are unusual, but she'd have to be an exceptionally unusual one for the question, What does my work mean to you as a group?, to not be uppermost in her mind.
You're kinder and more forgiving than I am about the hypothetical misreading. I'm more inclined to think that someone who can spot the linkage between "communities" and "bonding" should also be able to figure out that those are two separate comments. And by me, a person who begins by saying "there's a question I've wondered about, but couldn't ask for fear of seeming like a troll; perhaps I can ask it here?" is clearly hoping for a non-hostile response.
Kim, I'll agree that forums belong to the people who make and inhabit them. I don't see it as a matter of rights so much as manners.
Just curious: what kind of "reasonable & moderate" is that? What are the rules there?
And one more general observation. It's been interesting watching the word "snarky", which PZB used to characterize an earlier comment posted to that group, migrate over and attach itself to people's descriptions of her response.
If anyone's bored and wants to play with [anonymous jerk], the IP address is 24.1.175.159.
All I can derive from that is that the poster gets their Internet connection from Comcast (as do I), and that they are probably in Texas. However, I claim no special expertise in such investigation.
Unfortunately, I have a bit of experience with this. I help moderate a large mailing list devoted to discussing the works of a dead Golden Age mystery novelist. Her final book in the series was never finished--she ceased working on it right around the time of Edward's abdication. About 5 years ago, the author's estate commissioned a British author who had been shortlisted for the Booker prize to complete the novel. Purists (of which I am one) were outraged. About 2 years ago, we were discussing the book, its merits, and whether or not it should have been completed. I posted a highly critical comment about the estate's decision to complete the novel, and the Author (who had been a member of the list for years but who rarely deigned to comment and was always nomail unless the book she'd completed was being discussed) was outraged. What outraged her even more was that I refused to apologize (I did not insult her or her work, I was critical of a decision the estate had made). She then went on to deliberately break any number of rules in our community, chief among them being that offlist communications remain offlist. When called on it, she felt that she was exempt from the rules because she was an Author.
After giving her plenty of opportunities to stop expecting exemptions from the rules, which she disregarded, we banned her. We treat all members the same, whether Authors or Fans).
What I'm trying to say is that the members of online communities--even if ones open to the public--have the right to decide who they want to participate. Particularly if someone comes into the community and posts with apparently little idea of what the community is really about or the conventions that members of the community abide by when posting. I wonder how long Brite read the community before she posted. I also wonder if she bothered to let them know that she was reading before her post which caused all the brouhaha. Because, frankly, her questions read--to me--as pretty patronizing, as if she expected the members of the community to fall all over themselves because she was supposedly the object of their affection. And when they didn't, and in fact made it clear that her presence wasn't welcome, she got peevish.
I'm not saying that Authors and Fans (and Critics) shouldn't intermingle--in fact, it's a lovely thing being able to ask a varied group of people about a text. However, having an Author present can often inhibit free discussion, particularly if the Author doesn't respect the community and, in my opinion, Brite didn't respect this one.
Of course, I'm biased because I loathe Brite's writing with the passion of a thousand fiery suns: Lost Souls is the only book I have ever felt the urge to burn.
Well, if I posted over at the neilgaiman.com board I'd expect the same amount of respect and politeness that anyone gets; and if I was out of line (eg "How dare you all say that A GAME OF YOU was not the single greatest work of literature of all time! I shall hunt you down one by one and you shall die unspeakable yet appropriate deaths! hahahahaha!") I'd hope at least for a gentle "that's not how we do things here" warning before being banned from the playground.
I long ago -- probably around 1991 -- decided not to post places that people gathered to talk about what I wrote, because it seemed easier and more sensible that way. But that's me. I certainly think that an author has every right to talk to people talking about the author or the work, and no obligation to suffer nobly and in silence the criticism of twits or the wise. Still, it's not a battle any author will ever win (I've watched many of them try and fail), and it's much easier to just shrug and think "the dogs bark and the caravan move on" or something equally reassuring, and go back to work. No-one's ever going to like everything you do, nor should they. (I would take much more seriously the repeated criticism of "ENDLESS NIGHTS" that it's 3 or 4 good stories and 3 or 4 sub-par ones if there was any kind of consensus on which the good ones were and which the bad.)
On the Poppy Z Brite front, I *highly* recommend her forthcoming novel, Liquor, which is a very readable, funny novel about two young chefs trying to make a go of things in the restaurant business in New Orleans. No cannibalism, vampirism, gothiness or dark. It's more like one wishes the novels of Anthony Bourdain were (rather than his non-fiction, which it feels a lot like).
Miss Brite's final comments were basically the last straw after fans of her horror/vampire works (I think she insists they are not that, or it might be that she resents being called a horror/vamp author. Genre check, anyone?) were often referred to a baby bats, a favourite phrase of hers.
Really, Miss Brite represents many fan's secret fear - that really the person you admire (be it a writer, actor, director, or what have you) doesn't actually like you!
...A moot point really, because if I haven't made it completely clear, what many people are not taking into account was the name was a JOKE, and the comm was NOT for discussing Miss Brite. Looking at the comm description (as it was then, at least) would really have helped, and avoided all this nonsense!
***
Finally, as you may well have guessed, Kwobtchan is a friend of mine and it upsets me that some people here are intent on psychoanalyzing her. So her journal's self-absorbed? Basically, there are two types of journal. Ones like this which anticipate an anonymous audience and write to that audience, and the other 90% which are written for friends and for yourself.
And playground bully? No. Miss Brite turns up in a tiny comm which names itself after her books because they are easier to hit people over the head with(!), singles out her friend who had said she didn't like certain aspects of her books, after having a history of snide remarks about fans, then whines about being told off because it means she isn't one of the 'Cool Kids', and THEN whines about it in her journal encouraging everyone to visit the link (which obviously led to flames). It was only after a prolonged 'discussion', that she was banned. The post was deleted, and we are only left with Miss Brite's account.
Looking at the comm description (as it was then, at least)
and
The post was deleted, and we are only left with Miss Brite's account.
Which raises the interesting question of what I would do if I were ever in an analogous situation. I know people who have had highly unpleasant flamewars (curse fandom_wank, anyway) erupt on their journals and deleted the posts
because it was too upsetting, and I would never tell them that they shouldn't have. But one does end up with the problem here, that any further discussions can't refer to the source.
(LJ does not allow the editing of comments, so disemvoweling or the like are not possible. It does allow retroactively making the post visible to only a selected group of logged-in people.)
Have other people here had similar situations, and what have you done?
Just as a note, the "prolonged discussion" lasted at most four hours. Even by internet time, that's not very "prolonged".
(I'm not a dispassionate observer in this. Poppy is the person to whom I am not related who has been my friend the longest time. And I have a very strong sense of what behavior online is appropriate, and also of who in this encounter has behaved appropriately.)
Kat — I guess I’m not clear on what it means in that community to hit someone over the head with a book; but you can hardly blame us for taking the whole thing out of context when we can’t see the context, can you?
Kate - here's my war story:
I've been trying to learn to write full time for 2.5 years. I decided to start with something with clear guidelines, so it was my goal to write a romance novel. I joined an online comm of romance writers (sponsored by a publisher) and have been thrown off 4 times, over stuff that amounted to lazy reading, sloppy (on my part)posting or personal differences that made me undesirable in that forum (once I made the mistake of asking why there are no 'Inspirational Romance' books with faiths other than Christian).
My side of it is that I don't always phrase things the way most people would (it takes time to learn these things) due to a brain injury that makes me verbal but not as fluent as I'd like to be. So, what do I do? I go away for a while, then after a few months, I come back and see if they've cooled down. I've found that trying to explain that someone has misunderstood me is not helpful. The mod told me my first post made me sound like I was walking in with a biohazard sticker on my butt. She always deletes all my posts whenever she bans me, so no one can go back and see what it was that set it off. Sheesh...
Anyhow, I actually appreciate it when someone explains to me why they're upset, but for the most part folks will write you off as not worth the effort if you sound like someone who doesn't agree with them, right? It takes quite a while to learn to fit in and sometimes, in spite of ones's best efforts, it just doesn't work.
I've invited the mod to come out and meet me (we put on a small con where she would be most welcome) and she hasn't. Some 20 of the other folks from the comm have, though, and everyone's still speaking to me. I don't expect everyone to like me, but I do know that groups form outside the bounds of what can be seen publicly and lobby whenever I've been thrown off, to get them to do it, that is. It would be easy to say it's just because I speak up whenever someone uses the word witch as a perjorative or I obviously fail to understand that part of the charm of a Native American hero is that he always, in every book, drifts into a fugue state wherein he envisions his Indian grandmother, in her braids, sending him some words of wisdom. But really, it's probably because I'm a jerk sometimes.
Too bad we don't all have our baggage stickers where everyone can see them, eh?
PS the Mormons kicked me out, too.
There are inspirational romance novels? Like... no I can't type it, I can't begin to imagine what that means. Are the characters just really spiritual? Are they hot steamy honeymoon scenes? Are some characters devine?
I want to make all sorts of jokes about non-christian inspirational romance novels, but when I type them they seem to be in such bad taste.
Rachel: I know you're only joking by pretending to be snarky, and Karen, I know you're trying to be literary and feel attacked by authors who don't share your reference frame. I assure you, I put my foot in my mouth more than both of you combined. So please take this in a constructive way.
My primary genres are science, math, computers, science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, thrillers, westerns, and poetry. BUT there is no reason to be snarky about Romance. Romance is a wonderful field, with over 8,000 professional authors in RWA (Romance Writers of America), whose readers buy more books than all Science Fiction readers combined. Now, they can't all be wrong, can they? And, notwithstanding my spoof in this thread about God being banned from an Atheist blog, there's no reason to belittle Inspirational Romance as a subgenre. Although most writers can take a good joke, if you can suggest one...
For definitions, and examples, see:
"Romance Subgenres" at
http://www.magicdragon.com/ROgens.html
and/or
"Romance Definitions."
This is more than slightly self-serving, as I created those pages. But I also feel a desire to defend those authors and editors and readers.
I think the themesong is:
"Don't rain on my parade."
Umm, I was busy frothing at the mouth and missed the second URL:
"Romance Definitions"
http://www.magicdragon.com/ROdefs.html
I am working on a Unified Field Theory of Genres, and believe that many authors of other genres belittle Romance out of misunderstanding and lack of knowledge of the many ways in which that field is expanding and its marketing is splintering into interesting sub-sub-genres.
Pity that Jane Austen didn't write science fiction, eh?
Kat writes:
"The post was deleted, and we are only left with Miss Brite's account."
Shame the post was deleted, then.
Also, as a general rule, if you *don't* want someone to show up on your site, or in your discussion (or whatever), don't name the discussion (or whatever) after them (and especially, I would think, don't name them after authors, who are by nature curious about being fictional creatures in someone else's universe). Thanks to the twin powers of search engines and personal vanity, putting someone's name on something on the Internet is tantamount to inviting their presence, not unlike (depending on your perspective) invoking angels or demons. And we all know how much trouble that class of creature can be.
Henceforth, the above observation is to be known as the Law of Internet Invocation: "If you name them, they will come."
This is assuming no one else has yet made this observation (which I'm sure someone has).
Kat: I don't call Kwobtchan self-absorbed because she writes about herself. It's the way she writes what she writes. It all comes off, to me, as one big session of jumping up and down, waving her arms, asking people to admit she's the center of the universe.
Just for the record.
Of course, I don't have to like her, though neither do I don't say you shouldn't (you can like whomever you please). I don't have to deal with her; this little incident assures that even if I were interested in any LJ communities she was in, I would avoid them like the plague, so whether or not I like her is even besides the point. But on this particular topic, I happen to think she (and her defenders) are in the wrong, and overall I'm completely unimpressed with her behavior and personality as exhibited.
Also, if you persist in thinking of PZB as a vampire fiction author, you haven't been paying attention. Really.
JvP: Um, arguing that something is popular, therefore it must be good, is not the way to go with me. I dislike 99.5% of romance novels myself, and no, it holds no sway with me that millions of people disagree. Millions of people like Britney Spears, too.
I'm not saying there aren't good romance novels or good authors of same, I am just saying your argument for why to think so is completely specious.
The way to go here, as far as I'm concerned, is to recommend specific books that stand a chance of changing someone's mind. YMM(AOD)V.
(Along which lines, I recommend The Thorn Birds as an example of a terrific historical romance.)
For me, the childfree group's default graphic tells it all: Baby. Or ecstacy. There's a choice. Childfree.
Based on their graphic, the term seems to mean took so much ecstacy that we're not bound by social rules. Encounters with parents and children can be especially burdensome to grandious psychotics damaged by too many drugs.
The various readings of PZB's post are an excellent illustration of Patrick's point The author knows what he or she was trying to do; but what the rest of the world makes of it, and the uses to which they put it, are something else again. For what it's worth, I read her post as arguing a point (whether her characters were normal) which should be relatively factual -- but which could be a match to gasoline among people who have a thing about being different. (A mindset which may or may not have been clear from the description of the group -- did anyone save a shot of the description before the change?)Combining it with a question about beliefs -- even one that I don't think can be fairly read as "Why do you think you are so superior?" -- can make the sensitive even more so.
Oliver Wendell Holmes essayed a more focused view of Patrick's point, observing that in any two-person conversation there are actually six people: the ]real[ people, and each person's view of himself and the other party. This suggests that it's a bad idea to respond to (snark) with (snark)^2; (snark) is what you think your version of the other party intended, not necessarily what was planned by either of that party's other aspects. ((snark)^2 can be a good purgative -- I know people who write "Dear Toad" letters, then tear them up and send something that at least isn't a direct attack -- but letting it out usually just raises the noise level.) Publishing of any sort (words, sounds, visuals, ...) is complicated by the size&variability of the audience, and the lack of conversational feedback (even the little bit a public speaker gets), so the creater has a much more limited understanding of the audience -- and IMO is often better off without more detail; it's unclear the pre-screenings of movies and TV shows do much beside making them more bland.
I've come to two rules through bitter experience:
The smaller the on-line community, the likelier to be misunderstood.
The the further from the norm the on-line community, the likelier to be misunderstood.
(By the way, what are the rules of usage regarding "on line", "on-line", and "online"? I'm old and, if not actually in the way, certainly out-of-date, and wouldn't mind learning.)
On here, I come across (I hope!) as a fairly reasonable, if highly opinionated, person.
However, in other places...well, I've been tossed out of a small number, and gotten lots of people really pissed at me on others. When I meet said pissed-off people in person, they usually (though not always) say something like, "Gee, you're a lot nicer than you seem on line." Often they follow that up by saying so on line to someone else that I've pissed off.
Over the years, I've learned to write differently on line than in print, and that's cut down a certain amount of the pissed-offedness, but there's still a certain amount that comes to me. Some of that is stll me, I'm sure, but a higher percentage is other people. It's lessened greatly now that my political views have become more mainstream, which led me to my third rule:
Marginal movements draw marginal people.
Adam:
Marginal movements draw marginal people.
Good aphorism.
I don't think it's a priori ridiculous to want to discuss an author's books without having that author jump in and talk about other stuff. (It doesn't sound like that's what happened here at all, though.) I really enjoy the works of several authors whose opinions about some political topics offend me.
But I do think that the Invocation law is right. If you were holding a WorldCon discussion about someone's work, you couldn't guarantee that it would make them show up so you could become their bestest friend in the whole wide world. But saying, "Author X Discussion Group meets here," and then expecting Author X to always automatically stay away...doesn't seem so smart. And I think the internet is like that. We don't always get to say, "But what I wanted was this!" and have everyone else back off and say, "Oh, well, if that's what you wanted, by all means."
The world does not conform itself to our expectations. Go figure. Is it just me, or does the internet seem to make this harder for people to remember?
Tina: you make a logically correct point in saying:
"JvP: Um, arguing that something is popular, therefore it must be good, is not the way to go with me. I dislike 99.5% of romance novels myself, and no, it holds no sway with me that millions of people disagree. Millions of people like Britney Spears, too. I'm not saying there aren't good romance novels or good authors of same, I am just saying your argument for why to think so is completely specious."
True. Your 99.5% suggests a compromise position, which might run like this:
(1) Sturgeon's Law says that 90% of Science Fiction is crap.
(2) There are other genres than Science Fiction.
(3) For each another genre (i.e. fantasy, horror, mystery, thrillers, westerns, war, comedy, poetry, etc.) there is, for a given oberver or set of observers, a different number X such that X% of that genre is crap.
A specific flaw in my original argument may be that the very large number of RWA authors (8,400, say) and large readership (heavily skewed female, midwest or south), and large volume of sales (1/3 of all book fiction in North America or 1/6 of all book sales in NA) has a supply/demand effect that forces quality down to keep title flow up and thus speed of composition.
You make another constructive point in suggesting that one recommend specific titles. For instance, of the films I saw last year, I rank Return of the Kings as #1, yet also put a Romance in the top 10, namely "I Capture the Castle." That film, brilliantly adapted from the bestselling novel by the author best known for "101 Dalmatians," and shares the fun (for me) that the narrator and her father are both eccentric writers.
Romance makes up a huge percentage of all movies. See a listing of 1,000+ "best" titles, ever, and by year, and alphabetically, in another of my pages:
"Romance Movies"
http://www.magicdragon.com/ROfilms.html
And thank you again for clarifying my specious argument, thus forcing me to dig deeper for a good one.
This whole fuss-up has some interesting parallels to something that happened on Television Without Pity a couple of years ago. TWoP, for those of you unfamiliar with it, is a site devoted to (partly affectionate, but mostly snide) recaps of popular television shows. It's a hugely popular site with very active message boards and a large reader/poster community. My memory for the chronology is a little shaky, but there was a point a while back where Aaron Sorkin discovered the site and started posting on the West Wing message boards. The TWoP message boards are moderated with a fairly heavy hand (I think too heavy, but maybe I should have some more sympathy for the moderators), and Sorkin managed to break a couple of rules, be outraged, and then get banned.
Sorkin did them one better, though, in the West Wing episode where Josh discovers an internet fan site, pisses off the "internet people", and gets banned.
Kevin: Please try to understand that there were a lot of people pouring in by then from both Poppy's LJ and Fandom_Wank, which equals a LOT of internet time! ;) I know there were about fifty comments two hours afterwards.
David: Oh, I realise that! That's why I'm here to provide context. :) I thought that it might shed a different light on things if it was pointed out that it wasn't a fan forum for PZB, but discussing something completely different.
John: Don't name an unrelated discussion after someone? Yes, I agree completely on that point.
Tina: Ah, well, I guess you'll just have to take it from me that Kwobt's actually a lovely person, and great fun to talk to! :) As this conversation is taking place about a week (I think?) after it all happened, please bear in mind that you can't view the full story. I really do understand why you will be biased in this! :)
Regarding the vampire/horror thing, please reread what I wrote (pay attention yourself! *grin*). I never called her a writer of this genre, but I said there were fans of her horror/vamp works and if anyone could give me a better genre description for Lost Souls and Drawing Blood (that the author agrees with was the implication, but perhaps that wasn't clear).
Kathryn: That dig at Childfree was a little uncalled for, don't you think? Please consider why such people are so defensive when a simple wish not to have to have children is considered fair game in an argument like this.
a simple wish not to have to have children is considered fair game in an argument like this
I get the impression that someone who refers to my child as "crotchfruit" is a little more interested in my reproductive decisions than I am in theirs, and more than a little more interested in arguing about it.
I'm not a huge romance fan, but my mother-in-law turned me on to Georgette Heyer, and I enjoy her a lot. I wouldn't seek out Elizabeth Peters/Barbara Michaels' romances either, but I enjoy them more than I do a lot of the mysteries (my favorite genre) I read. I tend to avoid the genre in general, though, because I was scarred by a summer I spent in a small town where a good percentage of the fiction in the town library was by Barbara Cartland.
I think maybe you're just less likely to happen on an author you enjoy in a genre you avoid.
Tina - yeah, that's what I meant...and fyi, the Inspirational Romance includes no sex until after marriage and it's only hinted at, not fully described. They are supposed to be stories in which the hero and heroine are forced to examine their faith. Most publishers of this sub-genre specify 'Christian' in their guidelines, but some do not. I haven't found one yet that isn't. Writing a Buddhist main character puts you in a sub-genre category they call Paranormal (I think one of my banishments had to do with simply saying I don't think there's anything paranormal about having a non-mainstream religion). Many Romance writers think that Paranormal and Fantasy are quite similar. I'd disagree. The reader expectations are different.
Jonathan - Your numbers may be a bit out of date, or I'm working off a different RWA report - either way, I'm not putting down Romance as a genre, but I do wish there were a few more written above 5th grade language level and with elements that might scare 70% of readers but appeal to feminists, say. Of course, those kinds of manuscripts aren't often published because it's not a smart move on the part of the publishers, except small ones with little budget for distribution or advertising. I'm not trying for literary, I'm trying to learn to write a few sentences that make sense, at this point. But while among the romance writers, I've discovered they don't think of romance as Romance. Romance as taught in school is not the same as Romance to the writers/readers of the genre, though this is a generalization. I've learned a lot from romance writers. Some produce like mad for their publishers and some think of every one of their books as a work of their heart. I have friends who've written over 100 books and had them published by real, not vanity, publishers. Their books are not my cup of tea, but the authors have taken the time to help me learn some basics while encouraging me to find what I love and then try to write in that genre. I'm deeply grateful to them and I respect their choice to work as they do. It's hard to categorize some writers (hence, Brite gets stuck in someone's head as a vamp writer) so I'm trying to think 'cross-genre'. It's why I invite people to come here in the summer. We put on a summer camp for the genre dysphoric.
"Baby. Or ecstacy. There's a choice. Childfree." seems to me substantially more than a simple wish to be childfree. "I've chosen not to have children, and so far it's worked for me, and I expect it to keep doing so" is a statement of personal preference that gives no insult toward others' choices. So, for that matter, does "I just don't do well around children, and prefer not to be around them."
It's also possible to be a lot more vigorous and still not insult anyone else. "I prefer to live my life as far removed from sundry sordid aspects of life as possible, and the practicalities of tending children make me feel like I've fallen into a Racine novel."
And it's possible to speak of one's own circumstances in ways that do not imply being an uber-person. "I'm squeamish", for instance - which is part of my own explanation about why I pass on some kinds of food that I realize intellectually are perfectly safe and no weirder than things I do eat, but which still gross me out. "At this point, I'm simply only interested in adult activities." Whatever.
It is almost never necessary to be offensive or rude in laying out personal preferences for the organization of one's life, including choice of social companions.
Karen (Junker): I haven't been kicked out by the Mormons yet, but I expect we shall soon have a parting of ways. (I can't wait, but I think my Mother can, and it's largely for her sake that I remain attached like a barnacle.)
T: Usage of snarky - I use snarky a lot in personal conversation, but in this case, I think I do remember somebody else (not Poppy) first using it, and therefore it was tops on my word list when I was hammering out my reply. Interesting, yes, to note how certain words just latch on. (Today, I had the word "seedy" migrate around in a real life conversation in much the same way.)
PZB writes: "I am childless and planning to stay that way, but my lack of desire to have kids is not a defining factor of my life or something I feel the need to have validated by an Internet community....
I did experience a certain bitterness toward "breeders" in my early thirties, when it seemed to me that the entire world was geared toward celebration of heterosexual people and their babies.
I don't recall a moment when I made a conscious decision not to have children. It just seems I looked around at my life and, well, the decision had already been made.
I do occasionally feel excluded from mainstream American society, which is, as PZB says, apparently geared toward celebration of, and accommodation for, heterosexual people with children (and, in a small but growing way, married couples with children who are homosexual but otherwise live conventional, middle-American lifestyle -- I mean, little Billy in kindergarten makes TWO cards out of construction paper, Elmer's Glue and crayons for Father's Day and sits o
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